They are tearing down statues, changing street names, school names, bridge names and God knows what else. Movies such as Gone With The Wind now carry a disclaimer, saying the classic film “denies the horrors of slavery.”.Instead of learning from the slings and arrows of history, which is not always pretty or nice, we seem to be trying to eradicate it. As if to pretend it never happened..That wave of revisionist change is now affecting literature — particularly fiction..Here’s the story: Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, favourites of President John F. Kennedy even, are getting an update for the new century under the direction of the late author's estate..According to a report in Military.com, the author was a product of the British upper classes and displayed many of the prejudices that were common in his circles. The Fleming estate decided that those prejudices detract from the experience of new generations reading the books and has revised the novels to scrub what it has deemed to be racist content..The new editions will be published in April 2023..While there is no argument that in today’s world, some of Fleming's language and attitudes are a tad jarring. However, I have read every single one of his novels at least twice and I believe it’s accurate to say that these were the attitudes of the day..Look folks, life is tough and Bond, in the novels, was not a nice guy — a fact screenwriters and directors were aware of when making the films..We see a bit of that in 'Dr. No,' when Bond guns down Professor Dent in cold blood, remarking, “That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.” Showing no emotion whatsoever after setting his trap, he then blows the smoke from the gun — a gun which later sold for US $256,000 at an auction in Beverly Hills..That alone, should tell you how great a role the Bond series is, in our collective imaginations and pop culture. Fleming, a WWII veteran of Britain's Naval Intelligence Division who helped create the CIA, published his first Bond novel 'Casino Royale' in 1953 and completed twelve 007 novels and two collections of short stories before his death from a heart attack in 1964 at age 56..'Casino Royale' was first released on 13 April 1953 in the UK as a hardback edition, by publishers Jonathan Cape, with a cover devised by Fleming. Today that book in good condition could cost you as much as US $40,000..He would win further worldwide fame when President Kennedy — something of a ladies man himself — listed 'From Russia With Love' as one of his top 10 favourite books. This was no accident: Kennedy deliberately used Bond to project an image as a heroic leader who could meet any challenge in the most perilous years of the Cold War. The sales were so massive that as historian Mark White wryly remarked, “Fleming should have paid Kennedy a percentage of the royalties.”.In 1954, Sen. Kennedy was in a hospital recovering from back surgery and looking to kill time when a friend handed him a copy of 'Casino Royale.' JFK devoured it according to The Washington Post. His bromance with Fleming had begun..The two would later meet at and hit it off at a dinner at Jack’s Georgetown home during his presidential campaign. After a screening of 'Dr. No' at the White House, JFK said, "I wish I had had James Bond on my staff.".Fleming’s fictional impact would also be far reaching in US intelligence circles. Allen Dulles, who served as CIA chief under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Kennedy, was another Bond devotee. He supposedly instructed his Office of Technical Service to engineer 007-style gadgets for his agents. The resulting devices included exploding cigars and knife-tip shoes..Interestingly, it is a surprising fact that racial references in the original U.S. versions of the Bond novels that many of us grew up reading had already been toned down with the full approval of Fleming. Taking that into account, at least publicly, the Fleming estate says it hired "sensitivity readers" to do a closer reading of the texts, The Telegraph reports.."We at Ian Fleming Publications reviewed the text of the original Bond books and decided our best course of action was to follow Ian's lead. We have made changes to 'Live and Let Die' that he himself authorized.."Following Ian's approach, we looked at the instances of several racial terms across the books and removed a number of individual words or else swapped them for terms that are more accepted today but in keeping with the period in which the books were written.".So, what is being removed/changed?.The first thing to go is the casual use of the n-word. Fleming threw that word around even more than you'd expect..When the ethnicity of minor characters has no bearing on the plot, those references have also been excised. In the new version of 'Live and Let Die' for example, a scene where he attempted to write in what he thought of as Harlem patois was deemed unsalvageable and chopped altogether. A passage that describes homosexuality as a 'stubborn disability' has also been cut..The editors left in Fleming's questionable terms for East Asian characters and didn't tone down Bond's negative thoughts about Oddjob, the imposing Korean bodyguard in 'Goldfinger.' And let's not forget the unfortunate fellow, who gets ejected from the Aston Martin — notice that all the bad guys were Asian..These Bond edits seem to be quite different from the changes to Roald Dahl's children's books that caused such controversy earlier this year, Military.com reported. In that case, over-sensitive readers seemed determined to edit out the meanness from Dahl's prose, and for reasons arguably good and bad, the meanness was the point of those books..The publisher has since backtracked and will now keep the original versions in print alongside the edited versions. In today’s world, when one wrong sentence from a person can destroy their career, perhaps the latter was a good compromise..In saying that, racism in any shape or form is detestable. As was slavery. As was honouring the Confederate generals who defended it..But that is history and rather than tearing down statues, I believe we should learn from it, and move on..As previously mentioned, Bond as Fleming pictured him, was not a nice fellow … he was a killer. The point of the spear. He used women, and tossed them aside to achieve his ultimate goal. He joked after killing his foes. The final word in Casino Royale, after Vesper’s death, is: “The bitch is dead.”.Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett, for his part, slammed the move..In an interview with The Telegraph, he said of Bond's rebranded novels decision, "It's never a good look to change what an author originally wrote. It smacks of censorship and there's seldom much mileage in that."."Of course, there are words and phrases in the Bond novels which look out of place today. However, I feel strongly that what an author commits to paper is sacrosanct and shouldn't be altered. It stands as evidence of that writer's — and society's — attitudes at a particular moment in time, whether it's by Shakespeare, Dickens, or Ian Fleming," he added..Further, Lycett argued that Fleming's Bond could not be molded into the politically correct narrative. "Fleming created a sexist, often sadistic killer, with anachronistic attitudes to homosexuals and to a range of people of different nationalities," he told the daily..In 'From Russia With Love,' Kerim Bey shoots KGB agent Krilencu as the latter tries to escape by climbing from a hatch hidden inside the mouth of Anita Ekberg on a billboard for a movie..Bond quips, "She should have kept her mouth shut.".That is the Bond I know, the Bond I grew up with, the Bond I have always loved and admired … ever since my Mom took me to the theatre, to see Dr. No..And no one, my friends, can change that, or tear it down.
